Just Jump In
by Veronika Green
Summary: Fiyeraba. From then on out, everything was her fault. Everything.
1. Prologue

**A/N -** **I went out on a limb today to write this today. It's been floating around in my head ever since March, so I finally had to write it. Tell me if you like it or nay, because I'm not going to waste my time on something that people won't read. Also, the title "Just Jump In" comes from the song "Let Go" by Frou Frou. So yea.**

**Prologue-**

For years now, Elphaba Thropp had been having the same dream. It had haunted ever since she was eight years old, and she was sure she was going to lose her mind if she had it one more time. She hadn't always been the scapegoat - of course, she had never been exactly…well, loved. But never the scapegoat. That is, until Nessarose was born.

'Pain. Was she really able to hear it? Yes. The sound of a tremendous, hideous, shudder some sound of Pain filled the room. Elphaba was frightened. She wasn't sure why, though. Her mother would be fine, she told herself. She'd heard women give birth before, but had their screams ever been so horrible? Elphaba didn't think so, so she locked herself in her room, trying to block out the sounds of her mother's screams of pain.'

Elphaba sat up in her bed. Confused, she looked around. Where was she? This wasn't her room. The splay of golden girls shining in the white moonlight answered her question. Shiz. She was at Shiz. A college for conformist prejudice students. Of which Elphaba was not.

'_"Where's Mama, Papa?" little Elphaba asked. She was frightened for her mother now. Once the screams had stopped, the green girl's blood ran cold. Something was wrong, and Elphaba knew it. _

"Fabla," he said quietly, "sit. You have a new sister. Her name is Nessarose."

"Papa, you don't sound happy. What's wrong?" Elphaba tried to appear unfazed. But her worry was beginning to show through on her sharp green features.

"Fabala…" His voice trailed off. Was he not able to say more? Why, though? Why? "Your mother is dead." Frex dropped his head to his breast. Elphaba could see that tears were beginning to fill the folds in his eyes. Elphaba gently reached out to wipe them away, despite her intolerance to water. The tears burned her fingers, but she hardly noticed it. A part of her had died with her mother.'

From then on out, everything was her fault. Everything.

The early morning sun rose slowly. A euphoric ball of burning tragedies - at least, that's how Elphaba saw it. She watched it rise, the sky lightening with each passing second. She stood, stretching her long green legs from beneath the crisp sheets. She grimaced at them, how she hated them.

Walking to the window, Elphaba noticed a smattering of people. She looked to the old clock that stood lonely in the courtyards: five-thirty in the morning. She shook her head, her ebony hair whirling back behind her. People obviously didn't not understand the concept of sleeping in. Then again, Elphaba had classes that day, and had somehow had managed to fall asleep doing her homework. It baffled even her.

She shrugged and pulled herself away from the window. She didn't really care what was going on - probably some frat party gone wrong. Served them right. Besides, blonde bubbly Galindy would be awakening and would probably be expecting a serenade from Elphaba. The green girl rolled her eyes at the thought - No matter how plausible.

She heard a small, lady-like yawn from where she stood, and Elphaba watched as Galinda stretched and popped out of her bed, her blonde curls immediately bouncing into their place.

Elphaba shook her head at her eerie beauty.

"Good morning, Miss Elphaba," the small Gilikinese said to her.

Elphaba presumed that it was one of Galinda's good days - there were days when she would completely ignore Elphaba, and days when she would be remotely friendly to her. Elphaba wasn't sure which one she liked best.

"Are you so sure about that, Miss Galinda?" Asked the emerald girl, always the pessimist. And Galinda pointed it out.

"Why so pessimistic?"

Elphaba nodded to the window. "I think someone's been shot. Or, at least brutally wounded. The radicals are starting their protest against The Wizard sooner than anticipated. I'll join with them and become a vegan," she said dryly, pulling out a plain skirt and blouse.

Galinda grimaced at Elphaba's choice in clothing. "Goodness, Miss Elphaba. You're sooo depressing. Can't you ever put a little color into your outfits? And why so-"

"Stop there. Am I not already colorful enough, Galindy?"

"Please don't call me Galindy, it makes me feel soo…Um…."

"I'm not even going to put in the list of adjectives I have, alright?" Elphaba said, pulling on her skirt and adjusting it to fit her thin frame.

Galinda nodded and began to shift through her closet, deciding on which poof-ball dress of hers to wear for the day. "We have life sciences today, don't we?" she asked, flinging a powder-blue dress to the floor. Elphaba watched as it floated down gently.

"Yes, we do. we've been here long enough for you to know our schedule by now, don't you think, Miss Galinda?"

Galinda blushed as she tossed a light green dress over the bed. "Well, my memory isn't as superior as yours, so I'm sorry!"

Elphaba shook her narrow head and began to pick up Galinda's dresses. After all, Elphaba had the time that Galinda wasted on making herself more beautiful than she already was.

Elphaba was envious of her.

"Elphaba," Galinda said, ignoring the formality of 'Miss', "why don't you wear some form of makeup? I've got some face powder you can-" She looked at Elphaba's face, remembering that she was green. "Nevermind."

Elphaba had to hold in a snort. "Yes, never mind. Why don't you stop focusing on your already perfect hair and already perfect face to actually apply yourself? This is college, Galindy," said Elphaba, looking pointedly at Galinda's open book and blank papers.

Galinda only glared. "You're cruel," she said.

¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤

Galinda wandered off to be with her pseudo-friends, and Elphaba, eyes locked on the back wall, avoiding any human contact, walked to the back to sit alone. Which was how she liked it. She sat at the top, and opened her life sciences textbook to the last two questions she had forgotten to complete.

"Good morning, Miss Elphaba," said Boq, sitting down next to her.

"So I hear," she said dryly. "How is that no matter where I go, you find me?"

"Intuition, I guess," he replied, shrugging his shoulders.

"Of course."

Nikidik entered, and Elphaba found herself glaring at him as he took his place at the front of the room. Who cared if he couldn't see her? That wasn't the point. No one, much less he, could take the place of Dr. Dillamond. And Elphaba thought that he knew it.

"He looks a little insecure up there, doesn't he, Master Boq?" she asked him, practically petitioning.

Boq studied Nikidik for a moment. "Slightly. But you're just mad about the Dr. Dillamond ordeal, Elphaba."

"Yes, and he's a bad teacher."

"Oh, what are those?" Boq asked, leaning forward to see what Nikidk was holding in his hands.

Elphaba squinted, not all that interested. He held a shiny pair of antlers, bleached and glittering like the morning sun. "I wouldn't be surprised if those are Animal antlers," Elphaba pointed out. She looked at Boq. "Boq! Did you hear what I said?"

"Yes, Miss Elphaba, I did. I just choose to ignore it." He turned and smiled at her. She rolled her eyes and shook her head, sticking her quill behind her ear and leaning back against the wall.

"Yawn," she said, closing her eyes. "Wake me if anything interesting happens."

"Well, have a nice sleep, Miss Elphaba, because I doubt anything interesting will happen. I don't even think that Nikidik knows that he's holding those antlers," said Boq, nodding to where Nikidik was waving the antlers around. "I hope he doesn't hit his head."

"Why?"

"You're so spiteful."

"Goodnight, Master Boq."

"What's Nikidik doing with those antlers now? Wait, I think that they're magicked!"

"How riveting," replied Elphaba, completely without interest.

Boq clutched Elphaba's hand tightly and whispered, "Look! A Winkie!"

And so it seemed, a student from the Vinkus, in strange ceremonial garb, coming late for class, opening the wrong door, confused and apologetic, but the door had shut behind him and locked from this side, and there were no nearby seats available in the front rows. So he dropped where he was and sat with his back against the door, hoping, no doubt, to look inconspicuous.

The antlers suddenly took a convulsive twist on the wall, and wrenched themselves out of the oaken paneling. They tumbled and clattered to the floor, to the shrieking and laughing of the students, especially because for a minute Doctor Nikidik didn't know what the uproar was about. He turned around in time to see the antlers right themselves and wait, quivering, twitching, on the dais, like a fighting cock all nastied up and ready to go into the ring.

The antlers stood on their points and skittered, crablike, across the stage. As the students rose in a common scream, the antlers scrabbled up the body of the Vinkus boy and pinned him against the locked door. One wing of the rack caught him by the neck, shackling him in its V yoke and the other reared back in the air to stab him in the face.

Doctor Nikidik tried to move fast, and fell to his arthritic knees, but before he could right himself two boys were up on the stage, out of the front row, grabbing the antlers and wrestling them to the ground. "That's Crope and Tibbett!" said Boq, jouncing Elphaba in the shoulder, "Look!" At last they succeeded in breaking off one driving tine, then another, and the pieces, still twitching, fell to the stage floor without further momentum.

"Oh the poor guy," said Boq, for the Vinkus student had slumped down and was volubly weeping behind his blue-diamonded hands. "I never saw a student from the Vinkus before. What an awful welcome to Shiz."

"All welcomes are awful welcomes when you're being welcomed to Shiz," replied Elphaba, now leaning forward to watch the Winkie. She found him sort of intriguing - behind his barbaric-looking attire. "I wonder what he's doing here, entering now and all."

"Since when do you care, Elphaba?"

"Since never, Boq. I'm just being curious. Is that all right with you?"

Boq put his hands up in a mock surrender. "Yes, yes, it's fine. Really, it's fine. Just strange, that's all."

"Whatever," said Elphaba, watching as Nikidik apologized to the new student. He helped him away from the antlers that lay still on the ground, and pointed up to a seat a couple of rows away from the front. After all he had just been through, Elphaba couldn't imagine why he'd want to sit up front anyway.

As the Winkie walked up, his intense sapphire eyes met with Elphaba's. Her breath caught in her throat, and she could not pull her eyes away.

And so it had begun.

**Review? Pwease?**


	2. Chapter One

**_A/N - _**Wow. I'm exceedingly happy with the feedback you guys decided to give me on the prologue-y. So happy that I've decided to update…Wait. It was published on the 12th. I'm bad. But thanks for the reviews, guys, first chapters always make me…agitated? I don't know.

**Danke sehr **to **Lillian Townsend **for saying 'aww' or 'wow' to everything I sent to her. Or, well, basically sending the reassurance vibe lol ;).

**Disclaimer - **As to not further piss off Nicole. Wicked is not mine; however, in a Twilight Universe it would be. Too bad we're not all Trekkies! Wait, am I getting my Sci-fi mixed up?

_It gains the more it gives, and then it rises with the fall. So hand me that remote. Can't you see that all that stuff's a sideshow? Such boundless pleasure. We've no time for later - Now you can't await your own arrival. You've twenty seconds to comply. - **Frou Frou "Let Go"**_

**.oOOo.**

As the white stars danced overhead, Elphaba hung her head out the window to stare at the clock. The smooth bronze glittered in the moonlight, casting the eerie shadow of the clock across the courtyard. Catching the time of 9.00, Elphaba pulled her head back in, shivering as the cold night breeze cut through her clothes.

Wrapping her arms around herself, Elphaba fell back against her bed and wrapped herself into her stiff sheets. She laid back against the headboard, pen behind one ear, trying to study for her classes, but to no avail. The green girl just couldn't seem to concentrate, and she didn't have the slightest idea why.

When Galinda pranced through the dorm doorway, Elphaba pretended to be absorbed in her book. "You're never going to stop studying, are you, Miss Elphaba," she asked after setting down her pink-covered books. "Shiz has such a pretty campus, and you spend all of your time in _here_." She looked around the dorm with disgust.

"Oh. I'm sure that the campus is just _lush_, Miss Galinda, but I, however, prefer to keep to myself," replied Elphaba, still trying to focus on the words she was 'reading'.

Galinda rolled her eyes. "As if we couldn't already tell."

"That's right, Galindy," said Elphaba, "Just keep on being immature. It'll catch up with you someday, you'll see." Sighing, Elphaba gently tossed her book to the foot of her bed. "I can focus!" she cried.

"Oh, don't get yourself so riled up, Elphie," Galinda said in response, grabbing a book off of a chair. She flounced her petite body into a lounge chair and popped it open, with no intention of actually reading, though. "You know that new boy?" she started.

Elphaba's head snapped to attention. The new boy. "Yes," she said slowly. "Why?"

She fiddled with her pencil and stared out the window.

"Oh. I don't know. I was just wondering if you knew anything about him." She shrugged. "Do you?"

The green girl shook her head, her raven hair falling across her shoulders. "Obviously I don't."

"Well, fine. Poo on you." Galinda slouched against the back of her chair for a moment, then stood and pulled a pink nightgown out of her wardrobe. Changing quickly, Galinda threw herself daintly between the sheets. She was asleep within minutes.

Elphaba watched Galinda for a moment. Her round face resting on the pink pillow lightly, the way her golden curls sprawled across her face in perfect little ringlets - Oh. It was times like these when Elphaba couldn't help but be jealous of Galinda.

In sheer frustration at her own ugliness, Elphaba quickly blew out her candle and threw herself down onto her bed. Her attempts at sleep were pathetic ones, though; she wasn't even remotely tired.

She didn't want to fall asleep if she was risking her own sanity with those dreams.

But eventually sleep took her, wrapping its anonymous arms around her and pressing her headfirst into a cool pool of a blissful, dreamless sleep.

**.oOOo.**

Elphaba woke inexplicably early the next morning. She hoped that her Early Bird 'syndrome' was only a phase she was going through.

Grumpy and crusty-eyed, she rose from her bed and pulled on her boring, everyday attire. Elphaba ran a brush through her silky hair and walked out the door, quietly and without so much as a glance at the mirror. She was in a bad mood as it was.

Figuring that this early in the morning -7.00- was the only time Elphaba would have to herself, she strolled around the grounds of Shiz. Even in her terrible mood, she had to admit that is was a pretty day.

A cool breeze came up, swirling her skirts around her thin legs. Elphaba sat on the edge of the clock that had so stalked her these past hours. She stared up at its own refined beauty. "Oh, stop mocking me, will you?" she asked the clock angrily.

"Mocking? I see no one here mocking you. I don't see anyone at all for that matter."

Elphaba turned, her hair whipping past her shoulders. She tried to keep her face blank when she the Winkie standing before her. She stared up at the clock dumbly, trying to make herself speak. "Well, that depends on what you believe the real inanimateness of objects to be," she replied after a moment.

The new student furrowed his brow, trying to decipher the meaning of Elphaba's words. Then he smiled, having figured it out. "I don't think the clock's alive."

"Wow," she replied dryly. "Someone at Shiz with half a brain." Elphaba gently picked the petals off of an unrecognizable Ozian flower, throwing the velvety hearts to the stone walkway. Throwing the remaining stem along with the last petal, she looked back at the ochre-skinned boy. "What?"

He shrugged. "Nothing. I've just never-"

"Seen someone with such an unusual skin color? Yea, tell me about it." Elphaba rolled her eyes and stood straight.

The boy was slightly taller then Elphaba, who herself was only 5'4", so she estimated him to be about 5'6". Staring straight into his eyes, she saw something distant flicker in his eyes. She was sure she would've missed it if she wasn't looking.

"Well, it is different. But I can't say anything. Just look at me." He gestured at his own skin.

"Yes, but at least yours is remotely attractive," she said, biting her lip.

He smiled and offered her is hand. "I'm Fiyero," he said warmly.

She timidly took his hand. "I'm Elphaba," she replied.

Fiyero's handshake was comforting to her somehow. A contradiction of warmth to the cool day. His hands were soft and smooth, not a callous in sight. "Nice to meet you, Elphaba," he said, his eyes never leaving hers.

"You as well," she said softly, gently pulling her hand away from his. "You seem oddly familiar somehow, though. Have we met before?" Elphaba began to walk, motioning for Fiyero to follow.

Catching up with her, he said, "No. I don't think so. There was yesterday in life sciences, but we didn't meet."

Elphaba nodded, still certain that she'd meet him somewhere before. "You famous in some sort?" she asked, laughing a little.

Fiyero laughed nervously. "Well. I'm not famous or anything, but-"

The green girl turned and gave him a strange look. "Go on."

"I'm a prince," he said quickly and quietly.

Elphaba looked away, rather disappointed by this revelation. "And I had thought there was hope for you, Fiyero. I was getting a nonconformist vibe here."

Fiyero chuckled, more secure this time. "I am a nonconformist. I want to be the opposite of what everyone expects me to me. I don't function well under orders," he replied, keeping his head to the ground.

Like he was ashamed.

"Are you ashamed are something," Elphaba asked softly.

Fiyero raised his head, looking into her eyes intensely. "No. But my parents are ashamed of me."

"Ha. Join the club."

Fiyero smiled wryly. "Where do I sign up? Bad joke, I know. They try to turn me into the perfect son - obey all orders, stay quiet, never speak my mind. I hate it. I know that they love me and all, and that they want the best for me….but. Do you know what I'm talking about, Elphaba?"

"No," she replied solemnly. "I don't. My parents cast me into a corner the moment I was born. So I don't know what it's like to be loved. You can imagine why, can't you?" she asked, looking away, anticipating his answer.

"No."

Elphaba looked at him. His soft smile didn't falter a bit. Searching his deep sea eyes, she found him to be telling the truth.

"It's racism," he added when silence settled in. "For your parents to be like that to you."

"No, it's not. I'm the same race as my parents, so they're hypocrites if it's racism. It's discrimination."

"Did you know what I meant?"

"Yes…"

"Don't you have classes today, Elphaba?" he asked as they neared the lecture hall.

She shook her head. "No. Well, at least not anytime soon. My only class is at 1.00. I have the entire day off." She sighed.

"What? You're not happy about this?"

"No, because the only I'll be able to spend it with is my roomie, Galindy."

"Galindy?"

"Yes. Don't ask. Anyway, she's quite the airhead. Not always fun to be around."

Fiyero nodded, rather thoughtfully. "Well," she said softly, "I was lost when I happened to stumble across your path, Miss Elphaba. So I was wondering-"

"If I'd show you around?" she asked wryly, trying to hold back a smile.

He exhaled sharply. "Exactly."

Laughing happily, she was surprised at the words that came out of her mouth: "I'd love to."


End file.
